


To Capture a Man's Soul

by Zigster



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Challenge fic, Claddagh Ring, Don't worry, Fate, Fluffy-ish, John's other relationship is not the focus, M/M, Magical Realism, November Challenge - theme Soulmates, Past Lives, Soulmates, alright fine, feel good kinda fluff, hiding under a table, it's total fluff, potential for more chapters, series 3 fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 16:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12729828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigster/pseuds/Zigster
Summary: John Watson is late for dinner, and his mobile has died. He ducks into a phone box to make a call, and instead, finds something that will change the course of his life forever.





	To Capture a Man's Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Written for H.I.A.T.U.S. (Hope is a Thoroughly Unfinished Story) November challenge to the theme of Soulmates 
> 
> Not beta'd but well looked over.  
> Not brit-picked but somewhat researched. (Do point out if I've made any glaring mistakes.)  
> Currently a one-shot but perhaps there's potential for further chapters.  
> Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Off of Regent street there is an alleyway, hidden from most people’s view. Down the tiny alley and around a corner, to the left of a brick wall at the end of a right angle lies a K6 telephone box, painted a dusty pink, and left in peace for all the world to ignore. No one knows what’s hidden in the phone box save one person, Sherlock Holmes. That is until one day, a stranger steps into the box to make a call and finds what Sherlock had so carefully hidden away all those years prior - his heart.

 

Well, not exactly a heart as so much as a claddagh ring made of burnished copper and warm to the touch. The man notices it appearing on the sill next to him as he attempts to dial a phone number for the third time without any luck. One second the sill is empty, and the next, there the ring sits, glinting in the soft glow of the street lamp across the way. The man’s spotting of the ring makes his frustration seep away as quickly as it came, for he’s late to dinner and has lost his way. He’d only gone into the phone box because his mobile had died after sending him in the wrong direction, and he wanted to tell his date of his impending delayed arrival.

 

With ring in hand and spirits high, the man leaves the box and rounds the corner towards Regent street. Confusion colors his features for a split second as he realises that the exit to the alley hadn’t been known to him prior to entering the phone kiosk but now that he’s left, with the ring in hand, the path to his destination has become perfectly clear in his mind. Not wanting to tempt fate for his turn in fortune, he sprints ahead eager to get to the restaurant.

 

As he jogs, he fingers the ring in his pocket, reflexively sliding it off and on his finger. Each time he does, his hand grows warm from the soft metal and he smiles at the odd sensation it tugs inside him. He turns and heads down a street he hadn’t meant to go down, but senses on instinct that it’s the right path.

 

Before he knows it, he’s in front the restaurant, and only five minutes tardy. Relieved and invigorated by the jog, he pushes open the door, a smile creasing at the corners of his eyes. There at a table near the back corner of the tiny, romantic French bistro he had chosen for the occasion sat a woman with her head tilted down towards her lap, face illuminated by the glow of her mobile phone. She is petite and elegant, with her hair slicked back in finger waves and long earrings dangling towards her exposed collarbones. She raises her dark eyelashes as she hears footsteps approaching and a smile spreads across her heart-shaped face in acknowledgement.

 

“John,” she beams, kissing his cheek as he reaches for her, holding her tight to him. “I thought you’d found yourself someone else.”

 

Laughing easily, John sits, content to finally be in the right place with the woman he’s grown to care for so quickly. Her returning smile is soft and warm, mirroring his own and for a moment, they take each other in, studying one another with practiced ease.

 

Her thumb rubs affectionate circles on the back of his hand and then moves down to run along his knuckles and the creases of his fingers. At this gesture, she stops, looking down at their entwined hands to where the claddagh ring now rests on John’s finger.

 

“John?” She asks, head tilted to the side, earrings sparkling in the candlelight, matching the amusement in her eyes.

 

“Oh, yes! I found it.” He laughs, attempting to slide the ring off but it doesn’t budge. “I thought I’d give it to you as a sort-of apology for being late, but it seems . . .” he tries again, the ring straining against his knuckle and he pushes out a breath of frustration. “Shit.”

 

His companion laughs at the sight and places her hand on top of his, soothing him. “It’s fine. The thought was nice.” Her expression quickly turns from gentle to alarmed as her eyes widen and she rips her hand away from his. “Ouch!”

 

Cradling her hand to her chest she glares at the ring on John’s finger in shock. “What the bloody hell?”

 

John, looking horrified stares down at his hand, the copper of the claddagh ring seeming for all the world as benign as when he’d first spotted it on the sill of the phone box. Across from him, he notices the singed crescent of reddened skin along his date’s palm and quickly grabs her hand. “Jesus! That’s a first-degree burn!”

 

Moving fast, he plucks two ice cubes from their drinking glasses, wraps them in the linen napkin collected from his lap and gently folds his companion’s fingers around the bundle, allowing the ice to cup her palm through the fabric so as to not burn the skin further. She winces at the sting but accepts the delicate care, smiling at John with gratitude.

 

“Thank you. I’m fine, really. It barely hurts.” She stares at his ring finger again. “It didn’t burn you?”

 

“No, I didn’t even feel it grow warm.”

 

Intrigued, she asks, “Has it done that before?”

 

With red rising along his neck, he looks away, feeling caught. “It felt warm in my hand the moment I touched it, which is probably why I took it. I shouldn’t have but it made me smile. . .  I’m so sorry. I really have no idea what’s going on.”

 

Her reaction to this speech is a pinched sort of smile and she looks away and down at the menu. John does the same, hoping to salvage some of the evening.

 

Their waiter appears at John’s elbow and John, still studying the menu asks him for his opinion on a special wine for the occasion. The man’s jaded tone doesn’t help John’s lowering hopes for the rest of the night, and hands the drinks menu back to the man without so much as a glance, telling him to surprise them.

 

What happens the very next moment will change John’s life forever. As the waiter’s hand wraps around the slim leather-bound cardboard sleeve, the two men’s hands meet in the middle. Long, elegant fingers brush against John’s warm, dry skin, and for a split second make contact with the claddagh ring. In that instant, John’s entire world shrinks down to the tiny pinprick of a moment, barreling towards a cacophony of memory and sensation.

 

Rocketing backward, John’s body flies out of his chair as every piece of glass in the dining room shatters into dust around them, and the windows explode outward into the street. He can hear people screaming and plates falling to the floor but for the life of him can not open his own eyes. Ahead of him, in the void of darkness beyond his eyelids he can see the glint of something small and warm flickering just out of reach. John wants to touch the warmth he sees on the edge of his blurred, blackened vision and reaches out with all his might to find connection to the small spark of light.

 

The world comes crashing back into the foreground a moment later but he is not in the middle of breaking glass and shattering china. Instead, he comes to under a table, draped in heavy linen, sealing out all sound and debris around him. He’s huddled into a tight ball, knees pulled close to his chest. He feels incredibly small and vulnerable in the claustrophobic space.

 

“My ring.”

 

The two words whiplash John back to the present, and he blinks, seeing a man before him for the first time, his limbs arranged in the same manner as John’s though with much longer legs and lankier arms, he has a harder time fitting underneath the small table. He has to stoop his dark head of curls downward, leaving his neck at an odd angle, all the while John barely has to duck. Everything about the man in front of John is an intriguing contradiction but it’s his eyes that capture John’s attention the most.

 

“Your eyes,” he says, too stunned to be embarrassed.  

 

“My ring.”

 

The eyes in question, ever-changing yet vivid and sharp, are staring down at John’s ring finger, which glows warmly each time the man speaks. John lifts his hand, palm facing up in unintended submission. “It’s yours?”

 

“Yes. How did you find it?”

 

“I didn’t. It just appeared.”

 

Those unearthly, fathomless eyes grow narrow and pinched at John’s admission and the man curses under his breath.

 

“What is it?” John asks, feeling drunk with a sickening combination of melancholy, adrenaline and shameless elation.

 

The man breathes deeply and his nostrils flare with the effort. He’s pulling in large gulps of air as he continues to stare at John before he closes his eyes and lets out one long exhale. The warmth washes over John, bringing with it the scent of honey and cardamom. He leans into the familiarity of it, before catching himself and ducking his head into his knees like a choirboy who’s sinned.

 

John can sense the moment the man opens his eyes, and like a moth to a flame, John’s head snaps up to meet his gaze. Time is suspended between them as they hide like children under a holiday dinner table, and John doesn’t know how long it has been since he’s entered the restaurant or sat beneath the dark linen of this tiny world, but he’s most assuredly and profoundly lost by surreality of it all.

 

“What does this mean?” he asks the man, voice ragged as if he’d just woken from a long sleep.

 

The man doesn’t respond with words, instead, he reaches very carefully for John’s still upturned palm and slips the ring delicately off of his finger. It goes freely this time, the man’s touch like a salve to John’s roughened skin. John feels the loss of the ring like a physical wound and stares at the place where it once sat in disbelief before returning his attentions to the wonder in front of him.

 

Cupping the ring in his palm, the man’s attention is solely focused on the small circle of metal, his entire world zeroed in on such a fragile object. As if under a spell of the man’s gaze, the ring vibrates and glows in his large hands, and is soon plucked up off of his palm as if by magic and hovers before them precariously in the air. Slowly and then gradually faster, it starts to spin and John watches the images that appear before his eyes as the glowing bit of copper performs its hypnotizing dance.

 

Lifetime after lifetime flashes before him as the ring spins, showing John worlds beyond worlds of different versions of himself and the man sitting across from him. Endless loops of time where the two of them are connected in someway float up into the sphere and drift away just as quickly. John attempts to count the different permutations of his own soul racing by but he loses track after thirteen spins. The ring does not stop, nor do the scenes of joy, sadness, profound friendship, undeniable love, hatred, intoxicating lust, and redemption. John’s mind is on the verge of exploding when he reaches forward and snaps the ring out of the air, holding the burning metal in his palm.

 

He closes his eyes, feeling the copper sear into his skin and smiles at the pain it slices through him, hoping for the metal to scar him deep enough so that he’ll never forget all that he’s seen in this tiny haven under this tiny table, in a tiny restaurant in his beloved London.

 

To his shock, another hand wraps around his, and the burning of the ring turns to a cooling vibration of glacial water cascading over his palm, soothing his burns and healing him from the inside out. Opening his eyes in amazement he stares at the entwined fingers and wonders how he’d ever forgotten in the first place how important this man’s soul was to his own.

 

Lifting his gaze, and straightening his back he proudly introduces himself as John Watson.

 

The man responds with a small smile curving at his mouth, “Sherlock Holmes.”

 

_-fin-_


End file.
